The present invention relates in general to personal communication systems. More particularly, the present invention relates to an apparatus for secure digital content distribution and methods therefore.
The Internet has become an efficient mechanism for globally distributing digital content, such as music and movies. However, the advantage of easy digital communication has also allowed the digital content to be easily pirated by just about anyone with a computer and Internet access. The combination of high-speed broadband Internet access, digital content compression software (which reduces the size of digital content files), peer-to-peer file trading networks (which allows users to post content files), and lack of viable digital rights standards, has caused the content owners to lose control of their content. Consequently, content owners are experiencing a loss of potential revenue.
However, many current digital rights management (DRM) techniques have not adequately protected ownership rights in a manner consistent with consumer usability. For example, DIVX was a DRM technique that allowed a consumer to view a digital movie in a specially configured player, once that content has been authorized for play on that player through a phone line. However, since authorization was for a specific player, viewing the same content in another player was problematic, often requiring calling a DIVX service representative in order to change or add an authorized player, often for an additional fee. Consequently, because of the awkward authorization requirements, the consumer was discouraged from purchasing additional content.
Another more commonly used DRM scheme is CSS, or content scrambling system. Introduced around 1996, CSS was intended to protect the content of DVDs from piracy and to enforce region-based viewing restrictions. Typically, CSS key sets are licensed to manufacturers who incorporate them into products such as DVD drives, DVD players and DVD movie releases. However, since CSS uses a relatively weak, proprietary 40-bit encryption stream cipher algorithm, it has since been reverse engineered. Software applications such as DeCSS are now available, allowing commercial DVDs to be freely copied.
Yet another DRM scheme ties the digital content to a specific hardware configuration (e.g., Windows XP, Office XP, etc.). For example, commonly used software product activation generally requires a consumer to use a special activation code in order to register the software application with the software publisher before the application may be (fully) utilized. In generally, the product activation scheme usually involves hashing an activation code with a number that is generated from the hardware's specific configuration (i.e., size of hard drive, processor speed, etc.). However, product activation DRM schemes tend to be relatively easy to bypass.
Yet another DRM scheme is digital watermark, which may be added to the digital content, often hidden from the user, in order to track the source of the digital content. However, since this scheme does not restrict the usage of the digital content, it may offer minimal protection for the copyright owner.
In addition, because exact copies or clones of digital content may be easily made, current DRM schemes are generally unable to distinguish between a legally-obtained copy from its identical illegally-created copies. Consequently, few DRM techniques have been able to prevent criminal copyright infringement and organized piracy.
What is needed is an apparatus for secure digital content distribution and methods therefore.